


command me to be well

by thehandsingsweapon



Series: precious things [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, agnostic victor nikiforov, backing up tumblr prompts one at a time, from an anon prompt about religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 11:04:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16973427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: It's Holy Week. Yuuri wants to learn about orthodox Easter, as a way of understanding him better, but Victor hasn't darkened the door of a church in years and isn't sure he's interested in resuming the habit now.Yuri Plisetsky wants the money they usually pay their therapist.





	command me to be well

Victor hears the jingle of keys outside the door, the turning of the lock, and looks up from the nest he’s made in the couch: ankle propped up on the arm, bag of ice melting on top of a towel on top of his foot. Even after nearly five months it still surprises him sometimes, these sounds of Yuuri, coming back into his flat like it’s also _his_ flat (because it is, Victor realizes). Yuuri’s coming back from a run and, probably, a stop in at the corner bakery, since the morning’s practice was cut short by Victor taking a fall on a quad lutz and Yakov barking at him to go home after inspecting his weak ankle. 

 _What are you doing practicing that, anyway? You’re not doing quads in Moscow!_  
  
They’re in St. Petersburg for just a few more weeks; Yuuri’s already started packing suitcases for summer in Hasetsu, a departure delayed by Victor’s having volunteered them both for an ice show in Moscow in the middle of May. Worlds were already nearly a month ago in Boston; Victor can’t really remember who he stood next to the last time he wasn’t on top of the podium there, but he does vividly remember leaning over for the photograph, where behind Yuuri’s back he could sweep his fingers underneath his beautiful indigo blazer and stroke the small of his back. He remembers the look Yuuri gave him, too, the paradox of warning and satisfaction, and then he remembers how beautifully Yuuri blushed when Victor leaned over in front of all those cameras to kiss his gold medal.

He’s always known how to give the people what they want.

“Bakery closed early,” Yuuri grunts, kicking his shoes off as he orbits closer. Victor shuffles a bookmark into place, drops what he was reading onto the coffee table, and shifts to make room. Victor wants Yuuri to sit right at the bend of his waist, so that he can twine around him, long and lazy, and after a brief stop in the kitchen, that’s exactly what Yuuri does. “Something going on?”

Victor has to think about it for longer than he really should, considering his upbringing, trekking with Evgeniya, Mariya, and Sergei to church and then, eventually, just his grandmother. “Oh,” he murmurs. “It’s holy week. They’re probably getting ready for Easter.” Victor thinks the last time he really participated in the lead-up to the holiday may have been that last year he spent living with his Grandmother before moving in with Yakov and Lilia. Even then he didn’t take it particularly seriously: he remembers inviting Ivan to come with them largely for the thrill of playing footsie during the homily. He also remembers that _babushka_ smacked him soundly on the leg with a bible for his scandalous behavior. And he’s pretty sure whatever solemn promises he’d made to her at the time about honoring the season of Lent almost certainly went broken: there had been too many things to chase back then, and if Victor had anything in common with the severe, sad icons of the church, he didn’t want to dwell on it.

“Victor?” Yuuri asks, threading fingers through his hair, startling him from a reverie he hadn’t meant to fall into. It’s heaven.

“Mm?”

“I asked if we’re supposed to do anything. Or if you want to … do you celebrate?”

“Not since I was little,” Victor responds with a shrug, and he twists further, tugs on Yuuri’s t-shirt. Yuuri won’t want to be pawed at while he’s still sweaty and flushed, but Victor can’t entirely help it. Yuuri is a real thing, present for him to touch, and Victor has other ideas for communion. “Going to go shower?” He asks, not at all innocently. If this is sin, better to rule in hell.

But Victor doesn’t think it is.

 _Katsudon thinks you’re avoiding Easter because you don’t want to make it weird for him,_ Yurio texts him later. Then he also texts: _don’t you two have a fucking therapist? Tell Vasily he owes me money. Just pay me whatever you pay Vasily._

 **I haven’t gone to Holy Saturday in years …?** Victor writes back. The dots that indicate Yurio’s texting linger there for a long time while the teenager edits and edits again.

_Sure, whatever, Mr. Agape._

“I got eggs at the store,” Yuuri mumbles, a day later, after he’s come back from one of his appointments with Vasily. He goes once a week now; they’re working on his anxiety. Victor goes once a month, begrudgingly at first because he’s been _fine_ for a year. _You’re always fine until you aren’t. And then you’re really far from fine._ Vasily talks to him more seriously now about mania, has him identifying his warning signs. Vasily would think it’s a warning sign that Victor doesn’t want to step inside of a church. He’s not due to talk to Vasily again until after the holidays. Yuuri’s still talking. “… You’re supposed to paint them, right?”

Maybe because he’s just spent a morning in the dance studio with Yuri Plisetsky narrowly avoiding a shouting match over this exact topic, Victor finally hears this for what it is: Katsuki Yuuri, still trying to learn more about him, piecing together what it means to be Russian, what it was like to grow up in St. Petersburg. “Yeah,” Victor says, and realizes with some surprise that he’s more enthused about the prospect than he thought he would be. It’s good luck, traditionally, the eggs. He realizes he wants to see what Yuuri will make of them: a lifetime of writing in Japanese has made Yuuri’s handwriting neat and elegant in comparison to Victor’s blocky, cyrillic scrawl. Yuuri got them _good luck engagement rings_ once. Victor doesn’t understand why he wants Yuuri Katsuki’s _good luck easter egg_ suddenly, out of nowhere, he just knows he does. “I don’t think I have paintbrushes,” he realizes, belatedly, and his tone makes clear that this is a disappointment and not an excuse.

“I thought you might not,” Yuuri admits. “So I got the ones they had at the store.”

At the end of the day they have a carton of eggs of all colors. Victor’s have a distinctly Russian aesthetic, traditional, nostalgic. One of them he’s attempted to make into a matryoshka doll. Yuuri’s are softer, more delicate. Victor’s favorite is the one that looks like early spring, a very pale blue, dotted with black tree limbs and pink cherry blossoms.

 _Just take him once,_ Yuri texts before he leaves for Moscow. His Grandfather’s going to be busy making Kulich and Paskha for days. Plisetsky even texts him the recipe. Victor doesn’t save it, but he doesn’t delete it either. _He’ll see how long and boring we make fucking everything and then he’ll never want to go again._

“It’s a really long service,” he warns Yuuri later. “It takes all night.”

“I don’t mind.”

This is how he finds himself in total darkness just before midnight at Vladimirskaya, the cathedral of his childhood. Yuuri’s helping Evgeniya get around. The two of them can hardly converse with each other, but she’s too busy being delighted that he exists to care, this boy who proposed to her Vitya and who evidently wants to spend a lifetime with him. Yuuri plays the part of the gentleman tremendously well; Victor suspects he’s secretly chuffed by his newly cemented status as her favorite. Victor stands next to him, quietly translating events as they transpire, waiting for the Holy Doors to be thrown open and for a priest to emerge with the light from the unsleeping flame. 

Victor fixes his eyes on the stoic face of an painting he can barely see in the dark, a saint whose name he no longer remembers. They always look so serious, these ancient faces, and their eyes are big and dark. Victor realizes suddenly that when he was younger he honestly believed they had the power to look right through him, this boy who wasn’t pious at all, sitting in a church; that they knew him for what he was. _Fraud._  

He takes Yuuri’s hand and links their fingers together, kisses the ring. The smell of incense wafts their way as the bells begin to chime at midnight, and slowly candle after candle gets lit. Victor watches the way the reflection of Yuuri’s own candle dances in his eyes, studies the soft, flickering interplay of glow and shadow on his skin. They proceed around the church, and though Victor doesn’t sing the hymn he awkwardly translates it for Yuuri’s benefit. _… The angels sing the resurrection of Christ, and on earth we …_ He’s out of practice, but it’s a long walk, and Yuuri’s patient. _We on earth worship you with pure hearts._ Yuuri’s hand stays in his through all of the rest of it: the incense, the singing, the breaking of the Lenten fast, the blessing of the baskets, even though he struggles not to yawn, over conscious of retaining Evgeniya’s approval. It’s nearly four AM by the time they leave, dropping Victor’s grandmother off at the home she’s lived in for decades and bypassing the idea of breakfast. 

The sky lightens for dawn, which they do watch, coming up over the river. “That’s Russian Easter,” Victor says, and he looks over at Yuuri, genuinely curious. “What’d you think?”

“I thought it was beautiful,” Yuuri hums, and he leans up on his toes to press the softest kiss to the corner of Victor’s mouth. Pious rituals be damned; Victor chases his lips. The real religious experience happens back at home in their flat, sunlight streaming in from the curtains; kissing the plane of Yuuri’s stomach is the best and most sincere worship Victor has ever offered anything, and paradise is an actual place that exists wrapped up in his arms.

In another week it’ll be something he talks about with Vasily. _I think I thought you couldn’t be unhappy in church,_ Victor will say, _that if God really loved us it wouldn’t be possible to be sad._ Between them will be another unspoken confession: avoiding the place where quiet and ritual forced Victor to contemplate his unhappiness the most was a survival mechanism that kept up Victor’s illusions about himself for a decade. 

Vasily, who always has another question at the ready, will ask: _what do you think now?_

Victor equivocates. He knows that when he says the words _воистину воскресе_ that he doesn’t whole-heartedly mean them, at least not in the literal fashion that his Grandmother does, certain of Christ’s miraculous birth and his death. Victor appreciates the fairytale quality of the story, likes that it has something to say about the human condition.  

He thinks that the universe must be a good place, a kind place. And he must have thought that long before he ever knew Yuuri loved him in return, because he wrote the Agape program once, which is the point Yura’s been making, albeit inept and angry, in these past few days of squabbles. “I’d like to think there’s something out there that feels delight when we feel delight,” he decides, finally; Vasily nods and they spend the rest of the time engaging in what just feels like small-talk.  
  
He changes his program for the Moscow show. It all but writes itself.  
_  
[I was born sick, but I love it. Command me to be well. Amen, amen, amen.](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGBggbU5HMtc&t=YTQ4OTE4YmU1YTIyOTQ4Y2UwZjE4MWI0MmU5MTBkMGJlOWRiOWZkOCxGQkM4cFc1UQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AN6SMn0LjvXSoloDnmk0Wgg&p=https%3A%2F%2Fhandsingsweapon.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F164872520456%2Ffor-the-headcanon-prompt-meme-victor-25&m=1)_


End file.
